Asimov's Science Fiction

January 2008

Editor:

Sheila Williams

Issue:

Volume 32, No. 1

ISSN:

1065-2698

Pages:

144

This issue warrants a general grumble. There are a few fairly good
stories, a better-than-average editorial, and a good retrospective column
by Robert Silverberg, so I can't be too harsh with it. But far too much
of the issue is eaten up by the Allen M. Steele book serialization and
another Rudy Rucker short story. Even worse, the regular book review
column was cut in favor of an index of the past year's issues. The book
review column is my favorite non-fiction column (and better in
Asimov's than F&SF) and something to look forward to at the
end of the magazine. I would have rather seen Steele's long serialization
trimmed a bit.

"The Perfect Wave" by Rudy Rucker & Marc Laidlaw: As those who
have read my reviews for a while will know, I'm not the person to review
this. Unlike some of the other stories Rucker has co-written with other
people, this one felt thoroughly like a Rucker story, which means it's
surrealistic, full of magic that claims to be somehow mathematical or
technological, and weirdly superficially hippie in a stereotypically
California way (which I've never encountered actually living in
California). This story centers around a local pizza hangout, a surfing
video game, and reality hacking through some unspecific mechanism. It's
full of petty high-school rivalries and the sort of surfer culture you see
in movies. I found it all rather annoying, but I'm not a Rucker fan. (4)

"Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders" by Mike Resnick: Like a
lot of Resnick's writing, this story is a bit sentimental, but it didn't
take the obvious and expected ending. It's about two old men, lifetime
friends and partners in all sorts of things, who first met in a mysterious
magic store. As retirees living in a nursing home, they decide on a final
adventure and try to find some trace of the store that meant so much to
their childhood. As one might expect, they succeed in finding it, and
from there the two men have different reactions nad follow different
paths. I liked the ending; it avoids any obvious happy ending and tells a
more complicated story about aging, belief, memories, and decisions. (7)

"The Whale's Lover" by Deborah Coates: This is more a mood
piece than a plot-driven story. It follows a member of a crew hunting a
giant whale in an alien ocean, but it's primarily about Tish's search for
herself, for emotion, for some sense of closure with an alien creature
said to be telepathic. The result is a bit metaphorical and confused, but
some of the open-ocean imagery is haunting and beautiful. (6)

"The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald" by
Tanith Lee: The odd title sets the scene for a slow revelation of crisis,
a story that follows several characters (very confusingly always from a
first person perspective) through a city that's already doomed by a
plague. The fun lies in working out what the plague is and how it works
and then untangling the secret of one of the viewpoing characters. I
found it hard to keep the narrative strands together — to be
fair, I was somewhat distracted while reading it — but
otherwise it's interesting and well-written. (6)

"Unlikely" by Will McIntosh: I got a kick out of this one.
It's a great idea for a story: if two specific people, who don't otherwise
know each other, spend time together, the accident rate in the city goes
down. No one knows why, but it's statistically significant. It's a fun
twist on chaos and the weird hidden patterns that one finds in statistics
— an unrealistic pattern, to be sure, but when told from the
perspective of one of the two people, it makes for a good story. Mingled
in is fated partners and fated love and a contrarian streak that I quite
liked. (7)

"Galaxy Blues, Part Three of Four" by Allen M. Steele: The
serialization of Galaxy Blues continues. The crew has finally
gotten to their destination and the plot, slowly, begins to take shape.
Unfortunately, I just don't believe in Steele's aliens. They're far too
human to be interesting and the main plot driver, for all that it takes
place in a contact scenario, could have just as easily been written with
human characters. None of the dangling threads of background seem to have
much depth behind them, and I find the first-person narrator mostly
annoying. The final part looks like it will have the real action, but
it's taking a ridiculously long time to get there. (5)